


Found in Translation

by sifuamelia



Series: Rewrite the Stars [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alchemy, Awkward Crush, Awkward Flirting, Communication Failure, Developing Relationship, F/M, Japanese Shiro (Voltron), New Planets, Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV Shiro (Voltron), Pining Shiro (Voltron), Plans For The Future, Secret Crush, Stranded, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 05:56:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13564275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sifuamelia/pseuds/sifuamelia
Summary: Shiro accidentally crash-lands a pod while on a simple errand. Too bad Allura's along for the ride — making a fool of himself in front of his not-so-secret crush was never an item on his to-do list. But even in the midst of a thoroughly unplanned communication breakdown......they might just make things work.





	Found in Translation

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by: https://youtu.be/rplmd1afK5U

The sunset on Planet J’Kai (of the Qarth System, Quadrant B) was pretty damn… well, _pretty_. It set the sky overhead on pure fire, beams of soft red and orange and yellow practically exploding over the horizon in nearly every direction. Shiro was no fan of explosions, but this one sure did look good. But unfortunately, he didn’t have much time to appreciate it, because in the moment, things were a bit…

Well, pardon his French, but things were a bit fucked up.

“Dammit,” he muttered under his breath as he appraised the broken blastulator at the nose of the shuttle. Its glass-fiber coverings had been completely shattered by their crash landing. “God _dammit_.”

“My, we must be in serious trouble,” he heard Allura comment from behind him, sounding amused. He turned to see her crouched low as she inspected one of the shuttle’s tail fins — a portion of it had melted clean off, and what was left over was as twisty as a burnt soft pretzel.

(Shiro could really use a soft pretzel right about now, Costco-style. Did Space Costco even exist? He'd have to ask Coran.)

“Now, what makes you say _that_?” he deadpanned in response.

She stood up, and Shiro saw that her pure white space suit was streaked all over with rich red dust — J’Kai’s soil was 99.34% iron. (According to Slav, anyway. He didn’t really trust that guy. Not after what he did to him back in space prison.)

And that’d been the point of their recon in the first place — something about Pidge positing that iron plating might be a good way to strengthen the teludav through its magnetic properties, and Hunk being _really_ enthusiastic about trying it out.

Shiro had done pretty well in physics back in his Garrison days, but magnetism still eluded him. Still, he could never say no to Pidge and Hunk when they got excited about things. But nobody had accounted for the fact that the dust would have an unexpectedly nasty knack for scrambling their pod's instruments, and even the most ace pilot in the universe was nothing without properly-functioning landing equipment. Hence, their crash-landing on J'Kai's surface... and ensuing current predicament.

“Because you said a foul word. And you're using sarcasm.” Allura cocked a single eyebrow. “You don't usually do either of those things.”

He sighed, focus snapping back to the present. “I thought Alteans don’t know much about sarcasm.”

The princess shrugged. “Our language is far too refined to stoop to wasting time on petty ironies. But I _do_ spend a lot of time with the paladins. I'm learning.”

He couldn’t even begin to form a response to _that_ one. As per usual, he was exhausted. As per that moment, he was frustrated. He was running on nothing but two cups of coffee (and because they were currently stranded on a deserted planet in the middle of nowhere, he was pretty sure that he wouldn’t run across an open café where he could purchase the third one that his body had been hardwired to expect) and his overworked adrenaline system.

He sighed once again, and the cool glass of his helmet fogged slightly at the contact of the warm air of his breath. “Think, Shiro, think,” he muttered to himself as he took in the sorry wreck that had been their ride back to the Castle of Lions (and his afternoon coffee).

“Think, think, _think_ —“

“Shiro—!“ Allura’s voice crackled over their shared comm link.

“What, Princess?” he asked tiredly. He hoped that he didn't sound rude. _He_ was the one who'd practically dive-bombed them into J'Kai's surface in the first place.

And after all, she _was_ a princess. People were supposed to be polite to princesses. Plus, when it came to this particular princess, Coran would have the head of anybody who disrespected her on a silver platter.

Of course, there was also the teensy-tiny matter of his not-so-teeny-tiny thing for her. Lance had once claimed that nice guys finished last in life, but Shiro didn’t believe that. He didn’t buy into the whole being a jerk just to make a girl like him back.

Besides, none of that would ever matter anyway. There was no way in hell or high water that anything would ever happen between him and Allura. After all, she _was_ a princess, and Coran would have his head on a—

“Shiro, I… I think something's wrong with my—“

“Princess!” He paced toward her, steps becoming quicker and sloppier at the sight of her horrified face through the red-dusted glass confines of her helmet. He almost crashed into her after one particularly powerful stride atop J’Kai’s not-so-powerful gravitational hold nearly launched him into the air.

“My helmet, the system, it, it's—“ There was a harsh crackle piercing his ears, but he didn’t care. He reached out to take her helmeted head in both of his hands, eyes desperately searching the damn thing for cracks, for leaks, for—

“It's failing, I—!“

Their comm link went completely silent.

“Allura!” he practically shouted. He was still thumbing around the edges of her helmet, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. Just that _look_ in her eyes, her enormous blue-green eyes that sparkled like sunlight on the surface of a sea, lighting up the entire skyline in infinite shades of pure light—

 _Damn_. He had it _bad_.

“Allura. I-I mean, Princess, what’s wrong? Please, I...“

She just stared at him, uncomprehending, but at least her eyes were resettling into something a little less alarming. She tapped at where her ear would be underneath her helmet.

“…Ah.” Her comm was broken. “So you can’t hear me,” he said, miming the act of speaking as he pointed in the direction of his mouth. Something in his stomach dropped, because working together to get off of J’Kai and back to the castle had just become even more complicated than before.

But then Allura was vigorously shaking her head as her eyes followed his movements. She poked the air in the direction of his mouth, then flapped her hand open and shut — talking. Then, she wagged a graceful pointer finger.

So he tried again with: “You can’t… _understand_ me?”

There was hesitation there… wasn’t there? A widened eye, a bitten lip. But then she was shrugging, so he decided that he must’ve imagined it.

“Your translator chip’s malfunctioning,” he concluded. It was then that he realized that he was still holding her head between his hands — he pulled them away, mumbling a harried apology as he did so. She just stared up at him in response, frowning slightly.

Shiro had always had a knack for languages. He’d picked up English when he was going on ten after visiting Keith and his uncle in the States. Returning and attending the Garrison had ultimately been what _really_ forced him to learn it. And once he knew English, Spanish hadn’t been hard at all. By now, he usually had a pretty solid idea of what kinds of comments Lance was making behind Keith’s back. (They’d taken an oddly flirty turn as of late, too, although he wasn’t really surprised.)

But _Altean_ … He knew _very_ little of Allura’s language. His lifestyle of late hadn’t really allowed him any time to learn it. (And honestly, that holographic bear thing freaked him out.)

“Great,” he mumbled dejectedly.

Even if she couldn’t understand what he was saying, she could read his face, and there must’ve been something in it that made her lay a gentle hand on his upper arm. He looked back down at her, shocked by the realization that her expression wasn’t one of anger or disappointment, but one of encouragement.

He took a deep breath. “You’re right,” he said. “We can get out of this. We can do this.”

She smiled up at him. He had to turn away, his blushing was _that_ bad.

 

* * *

 

“We can’t get out of this. I can’t do _anything_.”

Allura looked between him and the carbonic switch that he’d just tossed to the ground in a fit of frustration. She pursed her lips, but of course, she didn’t say anything — even though she seemed to be able to hear him, he still couldn't hear her. So, she’d been silent for hours…

...unlike Shiro, who had a chronic case of talking to himself. Even before he’d gotten lost in space with uncomprehending company — he’d been doing it since he was younger, much to Keith’s amusement.

“I’m sorry, Princess,” he murmured, staring down at the switch. “I’m just not… I-I mean, I just don’t have enough to fix this thing. Flight school prepared me for a lot of things, but… it didn’t prepare me for this…”

He sighed, rubbing a gloved palm across his helmet to try and get rid of some of the omnipresent red dust. It only made things worse, seeing as his hands were covered in the stuff, too.  _Ugh. If only **Pidge** was here—_

There it was again, that gentle hand. And atop his _Galra_ arm, too — Allura avoided Galra tech like the plague. Wow, these really _were_ desperate times.

He looked down at that hand. She really couldn’t understand a word that he was saying… could she?

Before he could stop himself, he said, “You really are the most beautiful thing in the entire universe.” He’d been wanting to say it for the longest time. And now — she cocked her head, but as he searched her face, he knew that he could’ve just as easily been talking about the weather for all that she knew.

“And I’ve seen a lot of the universe.” Nothing.

“Wh-Which you would know, of course, because… you were there.“ Still nothing.

Suddenly, she dropped his arm, and for a terrifying second, he wondered if her chip had spontaneously resurged to life. He still didn’t exactly understand how Altean technology worked, but it sometimes seemed like straight-up magic, unbound by the laws of physics and basically everything else that he’d ever learned back on Earth.

But no — she’d just taken a dive for the carbonic switch. She twisted it over in her equally-dusty gloved hands, her eyes narrowed in contemplation. And then—

The switch lit up in blue, the exact same shade of turquoise as pretty much everything else aboard the Castle of Lions. The blue light crept along its glossy black surface like a river running its rocky course, and suddenly, the thing was… _different_. The head of the switch had gone from resembling something like a wrench to a twisty, spiral-y wire.

“How…” Shiro breathed, thoroughly impressed.

Allura seemed to want to say something in response, but behind her helmet, all she did was visibly heave a sigh. She tapped the altered switch in her hands, appearing to be thinking about something. He could only watch in fascination as she stooped low next to the blastulator, prodded at its core, and—

_BLAM._

Without warning, they were blown backward by an aggressive explosion of hot air and billowing steam, shooting up from the shuttle just like one of the geysers that his parents and uncle had taken him and Keith to see many Christmases ago—

Somehow, he ended up on the ground with his ass in the air. And he could see that Allura, despite everything, was laughing.

He couldn’t help but laugh, too. Everything about her was infectious.

She was going to be the death of him.

 

* * *

 

“I’m glad you’re here with me.” Still nothing.

“Because I like being places with you. Even if we’re stranded on a deserted planet in the middle of nowhere. Might be hard to believe, but… it’s true. I swear.”

Just a stare. Those eyes were insane. They were like straight-up kaleidoscopes.

“You know, in Japanese, we’ve got this phrase. Kira-kira. It means, like… glittery. Or shiny.” He eyed her.

“It’s what I think of, every time I see you. Kira-kira.” He chuckled awkwardly. “ _God_ , that’s corny, but… I mean it. I—“

She dropped his arm at that one, looking up at him with those wide eyes, and for a terrifying second, he wondered if her chip had turned back on.

_Oh, **no** —_

The comm link crackled… and her voice floated over it, a little rusty from disuse, but still as refined as ever. “Kira?” she asked. She sounded more than confused, and maybe a little bit… intrigued?

 _What have I done?_ Shiro moaned to himself.

“Uh, y-yeah?“ was what he mumbled aloud, still a little surprised that the comm link seemed to be coming back to life in at least some capacity — at least he could hear her now.

But suddenly, she was jabbering away in Altean, the words overflowing from her lips like a waterfall crashing over a cliff. A really clever, kind, courageous, intelligent, gorgeous, _amazing_ cliff. She looked really relieved to be using her voice again… but then those lips suddenly clamped up, and a noticeable blush spread across her cheeks.

“Not gonna lie, missed that entirely,” he said apologetically. He was equally intrigued, though. Maybe he’d have to get over his fears and finally have a conversation with that bear…

They sat in silence for a few more moments, backs to the broken ship, staring upward at the sunset. The light on J’Kai was fading fast, but being there with Allura, well. The whole thing was just too _perfect_. Now, if only he had the guts to reach out, maybe put an arm around her slender shoulders...

 _No. No way._ When had he become such a hopeless romantic, going all mushy inside because he was watching a sunset with a girl that he had an enormous crush on? If Keith was here, he would be giving him hell about it. At least his Galra capture last year hadn’t deleted the part of his brain that felt emotions. Next time that he saw Haggar, he’d have to thank her for leaving at least _that_ part of him intact.

He dejectedly flicked at a particularly red spot on his suit’s knee. Magnetic properties be damned, this stuff was the _worst_ —

Shiro froze. _Magnets._

He leaped upward, tugging her along with him… and causing her to let out a strangled yelp. _Dammit!_ He immediately let out a frantic string of apologies, and even though she still didn’t seem to understand him, she placed another placating hand on his Galra arm.

He let out an awkward chuckle. _Focus, **idiot**._

He made a show of gathering up the dust in his palms, then tipped his chin downward, indicating it. “Iron,” he explained.

Allura nodded slowly. She seemed to recognize that word (probably because it’d been their objective in the first place). But then—

“Tetsu,” she confirmed.

Shiro’s heart nearly stopped beating. He stared at her.

“Ji… Jishaku?” she asked, uncertain.

She understood him. And she understood his plan — that’d been _way_ easier than he’d been expected.

But she understood him?  _Wait. What?_

He had to try something. He had to make sure that it was only the Japanese parts that she was understanding, because that would make the entire thing far less damning — if she was taking in his English, though, he was absolutely _screwed_.

(Because he’d just basically confessed that he was head over heels for her.)

He shook his head rapidly, as if it would help him get rid of those thoughts. He needed to focus. Focus on the mission. The mission. Not his feelings. Screw feelings. They were stranded on a planet in the middle of nowhere. No time for feelings. Time for focusing.

“Iron.” He held out his handful. Then, he smacked it together. “Magnets.”

Allura frowned, then shrugged. Well. _That_ didn’t make things any clearer—

“I can do it,” she offered in near-perfect Japanese. Then, almost too-casually, “Oh, look. The comm's readjusting!”

Shiro’s brain short-circuited.

“H-How…?” he stuttered.

“Your language sounds more like Altean,” she replied, still in Japanese. “English is… It's a lot harsher on the ear. I don't understand it as well.” She frowned again.

“The comm still isn't filtering English for me, though. The translation piece is missing.” She tapped at where her ear would be.

“Alright, then. Let's just use Japanese for now?”

 _Whoa._ “O-Okay.”

“I'm going to assume you think solidifying the iron into crude magnets will help us fix the ship,” she began, examining the pile of dust a little more closely.

“Well, uh… yeah.” He’d seen what she did to the carbonic switch — maybe she could somehow use that inexplicable power of hers to do this, too? "Maybe we can, you know, uh. Stick some things. Back together."

“Hm.” She poked at his palm. “Interesting. I can certainly try to do it.”

Not knowing what else to say, he reached out and took her slender hands in his, wordlessly passing the iron dust onto her. He felt like he was handling a small bird, keeping his movements slow and gentle. He didn’t want to somehow crush her, even though he knew for certain that she was one hundred bazillion percent uncrushable.

She was Princess Allura, after all.

“And I certainly _know_ you can do it,” he said quietly, not quite looking at her as the last of the dust passed between their hands.

He could feel her ocean eyes on him, and she began to say something, but then she looked as if she was reconsidering it, and then she said nothing at all.

The air around them glowed blue once more, Allura's brow furrowed, eyes narrowed, her entire being wrapped up in the tiny mound of iron dust. Then, the light suddenly burst, nearly blinding him with the abrupt visual change, but she was still going, and he _had_ to be there, had to be there to see her and help her and—

With a slight rattling sound, a perfectly-round and markedly-smooth piece of something manifested into existence. It wasn't exactly glossy and dark like the magnets that he was used to, but then she was forming another one, and with another rattling noise — _fwip!_

They stuck together.

"Incredible!" Shiro practically hollered. "You're incredible, I—" He noticed that she was giving him a strange look.

 _Oh. Right._ "You... You did good," he said, this time minding himself to use Japanese.

"It was _your_ plan in the first place," she reminded him softly. She still looked like she had something to say, but she was clearly holding herself back. "So, er... _We_ did good."

"Think we can put it all back together?" he asked quickly, hoping that his blush wasn't as obvious as it felt.

"I certainly _know_  that we can put it all back together," she affirmed, echoing his previous words. And if he wasn't mistaken, her cheeks were a little pinked now, too.

 

* * *

 

"SHIRO!"

He barely had time to register what was happening before another body slammed into him, nearly knocking him straight into the floor. But in that moment, he couldn't care less — he was far too thrilled to be back on solid ground (if the castle could be considered that) to resist even an ounce of Hunk's enthusiasm.

"I'm so sorry, I had no idea iron could do something like that to a pod!" Pidge practically cried, clinging onto Shiro's other hip with a surprising amount of force for somebody her size. She twisted around to glare at Coran, who was too busy fussing over Allura to even notice.

"Why didn't you warn us, Coran?" she said, tone accusing.

The royal advisor looked up at the tiny Green Paladin, arms akimbo and ginger mustache ominously twitching. "I do apologize for not predicting this unfortunate phenomenon, but I've never claimed to know all the secrets of magnetism! The universe moves in mysterious ways that even my vast mind isn't privy to!"

Allura giggled, laying a hand on Coran's upper arm. "It's quite alright, Coran," she said kindly. "We aren't harmed, and that's what matters most."

"Strange thing with your comms, though," Keith remarked, eyeing his own helmet with a marked degree of suspicion. "Lucky thing Lance spotted you on the radar when he did. Don't think your pile of junk would've lasted much longer."

"These sharp eyes miss nothing," Lance confirmed, shooting Allura a set of cocky finger guns. Keith rolled his eyes.

"All the same, we should take some precautions in the future when it comes to using Altean tech around iron-filled environments," Shiro said, eyeing Pidge and Hunk with a meaningful stare. "I think we should leave the teludav alone and let the scaultrite do its thing, okay?"

"Okay," the two paladins mumbled in guilt-tinged unison. But then Hunk brightened up.

"I'll make it up to you! Italian food tonight?"

Lance threw an arm around his best friend's shoulders, grin stretching ear to ear. "Best idea we've had so far!"

Even Keith abandoned his scowl. "That... That actually sounds incredible."

"Mind the lactose intolerance, bud," Shiro reminded his younger cousin with a chuckle. Lance was quick to join in, which immediately prompted the scowl's return.

"'Italian?'" Coran asked curiously, finally leaving Allura alone. "That sounds like _Altean_! Will you be preparing a delectable scaultrite pudding?"

Pidge looked faintly nauseous at that. "Uh, _please_ don't force us to eat anything coming from the digestive tract of a giant space worm."

"I'll think I'll just stick to personal pizzas or something," Hunk reassured her, looking slightly green himself. "With pineapple, of course."

"Oh, _hell_ no!" Lance hollered, at the exact same moment that Keith pumped a triumphant fist in the air. Suddenly, the two boys were engaged in yet another hissy fit...

...but it still wasn't enough to break Shiro's smile. "No place like home, huh?" he said quietly to Allura, who smiled back. "Glad we're finally back to normal," he added, even more quietly.

As the rest of the team followed Lance and Keith's argument out of the castle's hangar and toward the kitchens, though, her smile faded slightly. "About that..." she began, her voice hesitant. But once again, she quickly clammed up, and his heart stumbled over its own beat.

"Everything okay?" he asked hesitantly. Suddenly, his face felt like it was back on fire, this time without a helmet's visor to hide it.

"Do you really think I'm the most beautiful thing in the entire universe?" she asked softly, ocean eyes trained on his.

The entire world stopped.

His heart attempting to escape his rib cage, he took a deep breath before responding with, "I-I thought, uh, you don't. Y'know. Understand English."

"I... I understand enough," she replied. Everything about her in that moment was so carefully neutral. "Speaking it is near impossible, but some of what you said... I, well..." She trailed off.

He had absolutely no idea what to do next. So he did the next best thing.

"More than just beautiful," he explained quietly. "You're..." Another deep breath.

"You're _everything_ , Allura."

She froze. _Shit._

"And I, uh." He took another deep breath.

"Uh. S-Sorry," he finished lamely. "Well, guess I better, uh, go help with dinner—"

"Shiro," she interrupted.

_Escape plans thwarted! Disengage, pilot, disengage—!_

She stepped a little bit closer. "You should learn some Altean."

He was still half-ready to jump straight out of one of the hangar's portholes and lose himself to the unforgiving vastness of Qarth System, Quadrant B forever... but something was keeping him there, right there by her side. He didn't know if it was her closeness or the sound of her voice or the look in her eyes, but...

"I sh-should," he finally said.

"So the next time we get stranded together..." She awkwardly tugged on a strand of her starlight hair. "Perhaps we can enjoy it a little bit more."

Yup, the porthole definitely sounded like a good idea. Except—

_Wait a minute._

"Wh-Whoa, hold on a tick. What does _that_ —"

She laid a hand atop his shoulder, stood up on her tiptoes, and gifted him with the shyest but most blushingly forceful peck on the cheek. It was enough to make his brain short-circuit.

"We'll see," she replied, something mischievous in her voice. If he'd thought that his heartbeat was racing before, it was _nothing_ compared to the marathon currently crashing through his chest.

"See you at dinner, Shiro," she said...

...and then suddenly, he was alone in the hangar, with nothing but his uncomfortably raging blush for company. Well, not _quite_ alone — the lions were parked all around the cavernous room. He could feel Black's stare on him, filled with her usual fierceness... and maybe something like amusement.

"Oh, shut-up," he muttered, but he reached up to give his lion's knee an affectionate pat anyway, all kinds of unprecedented possibilities suddenly swirling through his brain.

He made up his mind right then and there — that bear wouldn't stand a fighting chance against him.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I have no idea how Altean technology/alchemy works... Also, let's just assume that Allura (and the rest of the Alteans) don't know much about Earth's languages, and they need (functioning) translator feeds to process their speech.
> 
> Also, this Shiro is OG Shiro. I know that he's strait-laced Space Dad in canon, so I hope that this doesn't seem totally OOC, but I'd really love it if he had this like crazy inner monologue the entire time that nobody else knew about.


End file.
